Week One Blog

 Week One 

Chapter One: A Holistic Approach to Building Design and Construction 

There seems to be a major concentration and importance of sustainability from the perspective of an interior designer. There are core principles of sustainable design, which include Energy efficiency, water conservation, material selection and lifestyle analysis, indoor environmental quality, and resilience and adaptability. As there has been more pollution and environmental effects the way we design buildings has become central to the issues as hand. 

There has been a new idea of the building design process called Building Information Modeling. It requires all stakeholders in the building to be involved earlier into the process. The BIM system helps to reduce errors and is also used to generate pricing, energy models, and other services. This process creates building that have been thought through and carefully designed. The LEED Green Building Rating Systems rely on an integrated team working on the design. Various people get many different roles in the design, and this is used to create building that are designed with a purpose throughout. There are different levels to the LEED certification and there is a team that determines the level at which the building holds. The points are accumulated determines the classification. The points range from 40 (Certified) to 110 (Platinum). In addition to the LEED certification there are other Rating Systems in places such as Operations and Maintenace, Interior Design and Construction, Cities and communities, and Recertifications. 

There is a huge theme of Intergration of systems, meaning how mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and structural systems can all work together to achieve sustainability. The BIM system encourages all the layers and individuals of Building Design to work together in order to create a well-rounded space. When everyone works together and puts in input collaboratively a better design comes out of it. There is a huge ethical responsibility for designers to protect the health of individuals in their spaces. 

I liked learning about the background of pollution in our environment and how the Industrial Revolution played a large role in this. It's interesting to think about the progression and how we went from the spinning wheel that worked with a petal and human labor. And it shifted to a factory of mechanical wheels, this sped up the production and allowed them to not just make more materials but in return make more money with the abundance of merchandise. Then moving into automobiles and the effect they had on the world. But also, in return how much pollution this created. 

Today we can think about the effect we have had on our planet, how much waste we have collectively created. Especially in the Americal culture we love to have things quickly and get them with ease. But this also creates an abundance of waste.